any tips for digital management of journal articles? how do you organise and use yours?

[Ocho]

This is for the purpose of essay writing at Masters level.

Currently I'm printing large numbers of journal articles off so I can scrawl on them and highlight. I then arrange them into piles by general theme and sub-themes. So I can see at a glance what I've got.

Obviously, it's costing me a fortune in paper and ink and it takes up a lot of physical space. So how can I do this digitally?

I'm using Endnote X7 but only for the purposes of compiling my reference list. There's probably some functionality that I'm missing there.

I know I can create digital files and sub files for storing journal articles but it's the notes bit I need. Also, naming articles by the authors isn't a good enough memory aid, but naming them by them end up with several the same!

So, any tips for how I can do this better? Any good software that I'm missing perhaps?

Or, just any advice please!

I keep lots of journal articles on hand as part of my work, and organise them by keeping a bibliography list, then the paper is stored as its reference (eg Hoskins IJROBP 2012 4 1824) with a corresponding word file for the notes (notes Hoskins IJROBP etc).

As I have lots of papers to manage, I do have separate biblio lists on different areas to make it easier to find (and easier for me to give to others)

One of the quiet benefits of a Mac which people who bang on about them being expensive don't realise is that Macs have PDF annotation software built in ("Preview"). You can save journal articles to a file, tag them with some descriptive information, and then add textual notes, highlighting, boxes, etc and, better, those additional notes you added are themselves searchable (ie, if you quickly typed "this will be useful for chapter 7" as a note page 42 of some paper, searching for "chapter 7" will throw the paper up).

I use a very messy toolchain to do this on my Mac which is the product of happenstance. I manage the references with Bookends and keep the journal articles in a the filesystem. Bookends manages the relationship, so that if I have a copy of something in my bibliography, I can click straight through to it from the database. Preview then allows me to annotate the PDF, and I can generate a BibTeX bibliography (STEM thesis) from Bookends. OSX Spotlight search handles free-text searching.

It's all a bit rubbish because it's not cloud-y so is restricted to one machine, and Bookends is very much showing its age. I needed something cheap that could do Harvard referencing in arts essays in Pages for an OU foundation course I did for fun, and Bookends covers that. When I later started a STEM PhD in my main discipline (ie, needing LaTeX and BibTeX support) I should have switched to something more appropriate, but didn't because I'm lazy. I've cobbled along and written a thesis using these tools, but I bitterly regret not getting a proper solution together earlier.

My daughter's doing a first degree and using Evernote, but I'm not sure how that ties into referencing software.

Smart people I know rave about Papers and Mendeley (the latter might be Mac only, I can't remember).

right, I'm reading both your descriptions veeeery sloooowly to try and understand what you mean

I'm on a mac, so that's a good start eh? I never knew you could annotate in preview!

Boss was telling me it's possible in Word 2013 to annotate PDFs, have you tried?

I use Endnote, importing bibliographic data and abstract text (use Google Scholar or the journal's own facility to export citation information directly into Endnote and many other databases). The file and its associated folder are kept on Dropbox so its always accessible and updates whereever I'm connected.

n.b. Endnote has a facility to save a PDF of the article with the software, but this can make it cumbersome to use (size wise)

I skim read articles and books, making notes as I go (some on paper, some electronically). I then use the notes section in Endnote to copy and paste in relevant quotes with their associated page numbers. Endnote then serves as a giant database of everything I've read. If the article is particularly useful these will be quite copious and could form the basis of a literature review in due course as they'll include things like - page 44 has useful definition of x that explains its theoretical grounding since the invention of the term in 19xx.

Whichever system you use, try and think through your working methods and what suits you the best.

n.b. Endnote (and most other such software) will have output styles in their hundreds that will fit most journal and book demands. If they don't you can adapt them to your use.

I'm not a great fan of Mendeley (I tried it for a week at the behest of a collaborator) as its premise is that you wish to share your readings with other people. I certainly wouldn't want to share my random thoughts, messy notations and etc with anyone (grumpy emoticon). I haven't tried Zotero, but, along with Mendeley it's free, which is an obvious advantage.

That's really helpful, thank you.

I think I need to explore Endnote and see what I could be doing with it. If I ever get some bloody time!

'Endnote' software is brilliant for referencing. You can record the books and articles you use, as you go. Then pull them into Word using an add-in, and all the reference details appear by magic! There is a free trial for Endnote, then you need to pay. However your University have a site licence, allowing all students to access the software for free.

Here is some info about using Endnote (just an example - all University websites will probably have similar info)
www.libr.port.ac.uk/libguides/index.php?cat=4

And here is a link to the Endnote website
endnote.com/

Hope this is helpful.

EndnoteisFab you seem to be a fan - yes indeed, I also use it for generating bibliographies. Amazing facility. And if you want to change one small aspect (e.g. show only forename initials), just go to the settings, change and update in seconds.

n.b. I don't have shares in the company (sadly)

Yes, I'm using Endnote X7 for my citations, but I'm self taught so only muddled through the basics!

I need to set some time aside to explore its other functionalities. I do find it quite a frustrating piece of software and the support pages are crap!

I'm on a mac, so that's a good start eh? I never knew you could annotate in preview!

It's just one of those little pleasures that helps you justify paying the Apple tax.

AND I just attached my first pdf to a reference in Endnote, BRILLIANT!

thanks all

You can annotate PDF files on Windows machines too - I highlight and add notes etc.

Just want to thank you all for your tips.

My lit search management has just speeded up tenfold and I wish I knew all this 5, 10, 15(?) years ago.

THANK YOU

If you are using windows you should have one note and others have said you can save PDFS as word documents and use the review features.
One Note allows you to comment anywhere, annotate etc and has some nice features. There are lots of tutorials available on line.

What I sometimes do now, if I research a new topic, is to write a document which makes all the interesting points & cites the appropriate reference for each one. I can go back to that when I need to. Put this citing-doc in the right folder with the same research area or could have a whole bunch of these type docs in a designated folder.

My problem with annotating pdfs is that it doesn't remind me which pdf has that info in it. My summary doc would tell me where to look.

Mendeley is what you need!